Nevermore Or Evermore? Poem by James Walter Orr

Hard jostled by elbows and crowded by shoulders,
I walked through a desolate, blight stricken town.
Men hunted employment, thieves sought helpless victims,
and aged men searched for a place to lie down.
Blind, crippled and crazy walked aimlessly: vagrant;
each one of their sadly etched faces stared down.
The buildings that once wore proud trappings of commerce:
eroded by dust storms and time, have turned brown.

Hot winds of misfortune were blowing old papers,
and some had already turned yellow with age.
The shoddy old buildings with cracked and taped windows,
formed props in the background of poverty’s stage.
A man on a soap-box harangued the pedestrians,
the homeless, the hopeless with hot, pent up rage:
The people with days since they last had a hot meal,
and weeks at the least since they last drew a wage.

Old sidewalks were littered with brown, broken bottles:
results of their contents sprawled in the gutters.
Some rested in vomit, some shouted in nightmares,
some cried in heartbreak while some spoke in mutters.
Tired women with sweat-plastered hair on their foreheads,
deep in despair looked outside, through the shutters.
The motor on some worn-out car at the station,
coughed into life, with backfires and sputters.

Today the fresh breezes blow dust from the sidewalks.
They mark the decline of a fascist regime.
New factories bloom in the towns of our nation,
marking the glad end of their terrible scheme.
Yet, seeing the will of such lethargic people,
dogmatic disciples, and languor extreme,
the rule of theistic and ovine compliance
may stifle self-rule and democracy’s dream.